art.

The black soldiers stepped out in his wake, and for half a mile he
strode at their head through the new-made mud of the path. But then he
was suddenly brought up all standing. Word had been tediously handed
down the long straggling line of men that there had been an accident in
the rear; that a great tree had fallen to the blast; and finally that
"dem dokitar, he lib for die."

Swiftly Kettle turned, and worked his way back down the narrow lane of
the path. The negroes he hustled against watched him with stupid stares,
but he gave them little notice. Leaving out the facts that Clay was his
only white companion and assistant, he had grown strangely to like the
man, and the vague report of the accident filled him with more
than dismay.

He had over a mile to go before he came upon the scene, and when he did
get there he found that the first report had exaggerated. Clay was not
dead, but he lay unconscious on the ground, pinned there by a great
cotton-wood which had crashed down before the fury of the wind, and
which had fallen across his right leg. To move the tree was an
impossibility; but with a sailor's resourcefulness Kettle set his men to
dig beneath it, so that the imprisoned leg might be released that way;
and himself gave them a lead.

Clay, fortunately for himself, remained the whole time in a state of
blank unconsciousness, and at last he was released, but with his leg
horribly mangled. A hammock had meanwhile been rigged, and in this he
was carried back to the village from which they had set out. Kettle led
the retreat in front of the hammock bearers. He left his force of
soldiers and carriers to follow, or straggle, or desert, as they
pleased. The occupation of ivory raiding had completely passed from his
mind; he had forgotten his schemes of wholesale conversion; he had
nothing but Clay's welfare left at his heart.

He got the wounded man under cover of one of the village huts, and
there, with the help of stimulants, poor Clay's senses came back to him,
He was lividly pale with pain and the shock, but he was game to the
backbone, and made no especial complaint. Indeed, he was rather disposed
to treat the whole thing humorously.

"All the result of having a musical ear," he explained. "I made the boy
who carried it put my banjo in a hollow of that tree out of the wet, and
when I saw the old stick was going to crash down, I made a grab for the
'jo, and got it right enough. Well, I wasn't sufficient